Why Facebook Isn’t Yet The New Yahoo

Facebook knows what its members apparently do not, which is that today’s Facebook won’t allow the service to survive on the social Internet of tomorrow.

Facebook used to be special. But now social is everywhere. Facebook finds itself trying to sell snow to Eskimos.

The only way for Facebook (or any online service for that matter) to succeed is to re-invent itself.

I feel very fortunate to have had an opportunity to work in early 2006 with college kids from Duke, Princeton and NYU. I looked on in awe as they spent their entire days on Facebook. And when the service became available to all later that year, I was one of the first to sign up.

The author here, Mike Elgan, gets it right when he says that Facebook needs to reinvent itself.

But Yahoo’s problem is one of identity. It has too many and none at the same time. That’s not Facebook’s problem. They are still the phonebook of the internet. Their growth was finite because people are finite. But their purpose is still as valid today as it was five years ago.

Yahoo has no vision. It has no purpose. It’s dispensable. Yahoo continues like a zombie, animated by the life it once had.

And that’s what Facebook is becoming. Yes, they’ll continue to have users. And yes, they’ll continue to make money. But Facebook is looking increasingly like a one-trick pony that doesn’t have the vision to reinvent itself for the post-Facebook era.

Whoa. Elgan gets it right all the way to the end. Facebook has no vision?

Yes, I don’t see the same obsessive use now that I did in 2006. But Facebook is still the first place I go to reach out to people outside of my close network. It’s one thing to argue that you don’t agree with Facebook’s roadmap, but to say they don’t have vision is surprisingly incorrect.

Since they are about to make some big announcements at F8. I’d wait for that before buying nails.